Launching a New Journal for Terrorism and Cyber Insurance

Natural hazard science is commonly studied at college, and to some level in the insurance industry’s further education and training courses. But this is not the case with terrorism risk. Even if insurance professionals learn about terrorism in the course of their daily business, as they move into other positions, their successors may begin with hardly any technical familiarity with terrorism risk. It is not surprising therefore that, even fifteen years after 9/11, knowledge and understanding of terrorism insurance risk modeling across the industry is still relatively low.

There is no shortage of literature on terrorism, but much has a qualitative geopolitical and international relations focus, and little is directly relevant to terrorism insurance underwriting or risk management.

As a step towards redressing the imbalance in available terrorism literature, a new online journal, The Journal of Terrorism and Cyber Insurance, has been established; its launch is to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11. The journal has been welcomed and supported by global terrorism insurance pools, and its launch will be publicized at the annual terrorism pools congress in Canberra, Australia, on October 7, 2016.

Originally conceived as a journal of terrorism insurance, coverage has been extended to include cyber risk, recognizing the increasing insurance industry concerns over cyber terrorism and the burgeoning insurance market in cyber risk. The aim of the open access journal is to raise the industry’s level of knowledge and understanding of terrorism risk. By increasing information transparency for this subject the editorial board hopes to facilitate the growth of the terrorism insurance market, which serves the risk management requirements of the wider international community. The first issue is a solid step in this direction, and will include articles on the ISIS attacks in Paris in November 2015; terrorism insurance in France and Australia; parametric terrorism insurance triggers; non-conventional threats; the clean-up costs of anthrax, and the terrorist use of drones.

The four founding editors of the journal have extensive knowledge of the field. The managing editor is Rachel Anne Carter, who has terrorism insurance administrative experience with both OECD and U.K. Pool Re. Dr. Raveem Ismail, specialty terrorism underwriter at Ariel Re, brings to the editorial board detailed direct terrorism and political risk underwriting knowledge. Padraig Belton is a writer with extensive political risk expertise, having served as a correspondent in the Middle East and Pakistan. As chief architect of the RMS terrorism model, I will bring terrorism risk modeling expertise to the team and have the responsibility and pleasure to review all article submissions. I look forward to sharing insights from the journal with subscribers to this blog.

Catastrophist, RMSGordon is a catastrophe-risk expert, with 30 years’ experience in catastrophe science, covering both natural and man-made hazards. Gordon is the chief architect of the RMS terrorism risk model, which he started work on a year after joining RMS in December 2000. For his thought leadership in terrorism risk modeling, he was named by Treasury & Risk magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in finance in 2004. He has since lectured on terrorism at the NATO Center of Excellence for the Defense against Terrorism, and testified before the U.S. Congress on terrorism-risk modeling. As an acknowledged, international expert on catastrophes, Gordon is the author of two acclaimed books: “The Mathematics of Natural Catastrophes” (1999) and “Calculating Catastrophe” (2011). Dr. Woo graduated as the best mathematician of his year at Cambridge University and he completed his doctorate at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar and was a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He also has an Master of Science in computer science from Cambridge University.